Ring. Ring. Ring. Ring. The phone rings 4 times then stops. I hear some background noise but not his voice. Not yet. Seven blurred months have passed by since the left side of his body went paralyzed. It was an awful stroke, the kind the doctors categorized as massive. It’s a big deal now for my papa to answer his phone and get it up to his ear with one hand but he can do it. For 3 years now God has been carefully interweaving Pastor Nahum’s life tightly into my own and this isn’t the way I ever imagined my life to look.
There’s his voice. He greets me, “Ahhh.” I can hear him smiling.
He sounds strong. We talk for about 15 minutes and through all of the differing sounds coming from his mouth he only gets out 3 words clearly. I celebrate those 3 words and try hard not to grieve over the 7 months of words stored up in his heart that he just can’t get to flow from the tip of his tongue. It gets harder every day you know...it gets harder to remember the exact way it was before the stroke changed our world. You wouldn’t believe how I miss the depth and wisdom of the things he’d say. Still I know my papa well and there’s a lot I can understand by listening to the inflection and tone of his voice. Just past the changing pitch of the varied attempts of my papa’s efforts to empty the words packed in his heart, I hear the youngest of the orphans. She cries and something is not right. Clief, Pastor Nahum’s oldest son, told me earlier in the day that baby Melissa was running a fever and had a bad cold. Melissa is a joyful baby and hardly ever cries but today her cry pierces through the phone. Memories of my own twin daughters living their first 2 years of life in this same Haitian village race around in my head. The children still living there could be our own children. Life in Haiti is too painful. I feel it like a sharp blade and I all I want to do is figure out how to take away their suffering. How can I fix this?
My flesh wants to fight against the shattered parts of this world because fighting is better than feeling. In my own wild desire to fix the hurting child-hearts living in this small Haitian village and not only theirs but also the hurts of my own heart, I fight. I get lost in figuring it all out, in fixing the mess...I’m scared to know how it feels...I forget to breathe, to pray. Is it just me or do you get this way sometimes too?
But I’ve decided even if it’s painful it’s better to feel, to know what is real.
When I allow myself to feel the reality of the hard things I more fully appreciate the goodness, beauty, and utter miracle of when the shattered things get pieced back together. Haiti has a way of teaching me this deeper.
And here’s the other thing: It’s nearly impossible for faith to exist in the midst of all the fighting, fixing, and figuring out. When I soak up what’s real and feel the hurt, I start to recognize the foolishness of the fight. Shouldn’t I know by now that there’s absolutely nothing I can do in my own strength to fix this broken world? I should stop the frantic flailing.
I have to remember who I belong to.
I am a child of God.
I take a long deep breath, look to the sky, and with heart surrendered I whisper out, “Jesus.”
Right there, when I face the pain, feel it real, give up the fight, and look to the heavens with faith...true peace floods the soul. Everything changes in that moment. The pain doesn’t always vanish in an instant but I’m safe there under the wing of my Maker. I can’t figure it out and I can’t fix it. I let go. I breathe. I pray. I pray for the infection that is hurting baby Melissa to leave her body and I pray for lots of other things I'd been trying to fix.
God isn’t finished with my story, He’s not finished with Pastor Nahum’s story, He’s not finished with the stories of the precious children living in Haiti, and He’s not finished with your story either. Somehow the stories of all of us who are children of the most high God are being woven together and one day our eyes will see this perfect and amazing purpose.
He’s doing something beautiful for His kingdom and for His glory.
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